1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to gaming systems and to gaming machines used to present gaming results. More particularly, the invention relates to gaming systems, machines and methods with a user selectable game interactive mode.
2. Description of the Related Art
A large number of different gaming machines have been developed to provide various formats and graphic presentations for conducting games and presenting game results. For example, some games provide an opportunity for a player to interact with a game such as by matching and marking of matched designations on a bingo card, commonly referred to as “daubing” the card. The player first producing a predetermined pattern of matches between the randomly selected game designations and the printed card designations is considered the winner. Consolation prizes may be awarded to players having cards matched to produce consolation prize patterns at the time of the winning pattern.
There are numerous variations of gaming machines and game play. For example, one variation of the traditional bingo game is played with electronic bingo card representations rather than the traditional printed bingo cards. In these bingo-type games, each bingo card is represented by a data structure that defines the various card locations and designations associated with the locations. This bingo-type game is played through player stations connected via a communications network to a central or host computer system. The central computer system is responsible for storing the bingo card representations and distributing or communicating bingo card representations to players at the player stations. The player stations display the bingo cards defined by the card representations and also allow the players to daub or mark designation matches as game designations are announced in the game. A primary advantage of this electronic bingo game is that the games may be played at a much faster pace than is practical with traditional paper bingo. Another advantage of this electronic version of bingo is that the games can be administered and controlled from a remote location and actually played at a number of different bingo establishments.
Various player interactive games, either played with paper cards or electronic card representations, are limited in the manner in which the results of a game may be displayed. It is also desirable to further increase the speed at which player interactive-type games may be played. Yet it is essential that the game retain the basic characteristics of the respective game, such as in the case of bingo that the game is played with predefined cards or card representations which the players match or daub against randomly generated game designations, and the game winner is the first player to match the designations in a predetermined winning pattern on his or her card or card representation.